


Fears

by Withercat1



Category: Pokemon Shield - Fandom
Genre: Gen, I pick on Piers, Major Character Injury, Original Pokemon, Other, Possible Relationships - Freeform, possible phobia triggers in general, possible trypophobia trigger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21742972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Withercat1/pseuds/Withercat1
Summary: First work I post on here, hehe.When Pokémon representing phobias and a strange new group appear, an even stranger group will have to stop the madness before thousands die.
Kudos: 8





	Fears

Obstagoon crashed against the wall of the stadium as Milo’s Eldegoss landed a critical Hyper Voice.  
Piers winced slightly at the sound it made when his beloved teammate slammed into the surface, but without missing a beat he called out a new order. “Throat Chop!”  
Obstagoon stood up with a growl and charged at the opposing Pokemon with a new fury.  
Before Obstagoon could reach the Eldegoss, the ground started to rumble.   
Piers dug his heels into the ground as Milo did the same, both of them realizing at the same time that neither of them were to blame for the sudden earthquake.  
The earth next to Piers began to split, a crack formed and widened as the ground shook with passion, knocking him to his knees. He fumbled for the Pokeball at his hip that he needed in order to call his Pokemon back, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the bright light of Eldegoss being called back.  
From the crack in the earth, massive vines appeared. They gripped at the ground around them and snaked along it until they stretched from one end of the stadium to the other.  
Milo backed up until he hit one of the stadium walls, only to have to step forward again as one of the massive vines reached towards him.  
Piers got to his feet and backed up as well, glancing back for a split second to make sure no wayward vines would catch him. He was glad he did when another vine slammed down right where he’d just been standing.  
As the vines finally settled firmly into place, the ground gave one final shudder as something pulled itself up from the chasm in the stadium floor.  
It looked like a massive flower, the bud alone was easily ten meters tall. But as it rose up and unfurled its petals, the size of the thing wasn’t what worried the trainers.  
The center of the flower looked like a warped beehive, full of hundreds of tiny, misshapen holes that each contained a human eye. Upon looking at it, Piers felt an unrivaled feeling of disgust wash over him.  
The creature let out a haunting scream, and turned on Milo, every single one of its eyes focusing on him.  
Piers expected Milo to reach for a Pokeball, or run, or even scream. He expected Milo to move, at the very least. Instead, Milo stared up at the beast with wide eyes. He made no sound, even as porous holes opened in his skin and sprouted eyes of their own. He just stared, silent and unmoving.  
Piers’ eyes went wide, and his mind was caught between fight or flight. He wanted to help Milo, but he didn’t want to sacrifice his own safety to fight something he knew nothing about.  
His body made the choice for him, and he tossed out a Pokeball on instinct.   
Toxtricity popped out of the Pokeball with a battle cry, but Piers could have sworn he saw the Pokemon flinch at the scene unfolding before them.  
“Sludge Bomb!” Piers yelled to the startled Pokemon.  
Toxtricity obeyed without hesitation, spitting a glob of purple goo at the thing that Piers assumed was a Pokemon.  
The thing recoiled away from Milo and swiveled to look at Piers instead.  
Piers squeezed his eyes shut as the thing screamed its eerie scream again, expecting the worst.  
But he felt nothing. Hesitantly, he opened his eyes and looked down at his hands. Nothing. No horrifying eyeball holes, not even a scratch.  
He looked over at Milo and saw the holes in his skin disappearing, though Milo was laying unconscious on the ground now.  
And then it clicked in his head.  
“Toxtricity,” he said, “don’t look it in the eye!”  
Toxtricity let out another battle cry in acknowledgement and readied itself for battle.  
Piers took a deep breath and carefully looked at the petals of the massive flower. Steaming purple sludge covered the soft pink petals, emitting a sinister hiss as it burned through the plant-like material of the Pokemon.  
In as loud a voice as he could manage, Piers yelled out command after command. He was unrelenting in the damage it caused to the flower, and Toxtricity seemed to be enjoying itself as it burned holes in the leaves and petals of the flower or blinded its many eyes.  
Before he knew what was happening, Piers’ commands were silenced as a vine hit him hard in the chest, knocking him back into the wall.  
Piers landed on his hands and knees, winded and taken by surprise. Whatever this thing was, it was smart enough to know that knocking Piers out would be an easier and faster way to win the battle.  
Another vine wrapped around Piers’ throat just as he caught his breath, silencing him and forcing Toxtricity to fight without guidance.  
Piers watched, helpless, as Toxtricity was grabbed by a vine and slammed into the ground hard enough to open another chasm.  
Toxtricity was down for the count, and Piers would the the same way if he didn’t act fast. So, he did the one thing he could think of doing.  
He threw a Pokeball at it. The light that was usually present during a capture was instead dark and warped, and the Pokeball didn’t look like it would hold the darkness it was absorbing as it fell to the ground.  
It wiggled once.  
It wiggled once more.  
It wiggled one more time.  
Click!  
The vines covering the arena and choking the life out of Piers vanished as the Pokeball locked itself closed.  
Piers didn’t get up immediately, instead content to gasp for breath on his hands and knees for a few seconds until the stars left his vision.  
When he finally stopped feeling faint, he stumbled to his feet and returned Toxtricity to its ball before trudging over to the Pokeball that contained the strange monster.  
With a tentative hand, he picked up the ball. It was serene and solid in his palm, almost like didn’t contain a beast that just destroyed an entire stadium and almost killed two of the strongest trainers in Galar.  
Speaking of which...  
“Milo?” Piers jumped over gaps in the ground to reach the gym leader. “Milo!”  
Milo let out a groan, but didn’t respond much further than that.  
Before Piers had the chance to call for help, the door to the stadium was broken off of its hinges to make way for policemen.   
Piers stepped back to make room for the nurses and their healing Pokemon to help Milo, and settled for sitting against the wall and staring at the Pokeball still in his hand.  
“Piers!” someone shouted from the entrance to the arena a few minutes later.  
Piers looked up to see a familiar face. “Professor Sonia,” he said.  
Sonia knelt down in front of him. “Is that the Pokemon that attacked you?” She pointed at the Pokeball in his hand.  
“Yeah,” Piers said.   
“May I?” Sonia asked as she reached out her hand.  
“Go right ahead.” Piers handed the Pokeball over to her, secretly relieved to be rid of it.  
Sonia looked at the ball carefully, going so far as to hold it up to the light and squint at it.  
She hummed in confusion and put the ball in her bag, then turned her attention back to Piers. “Are you injured at all?” she asked.  
Piers shrugged. “A little bruised, but ‘m fine.”  
Sonia opened her mouth to say something when her phone and Piers’ phone went off in tandem.  
Piers answered his, and immediately heard Marnie’s voice.  
“Piers! Where are you?” Marnie yelled over a loud background rumble.  
“Marnie?” Piers sat up straighter, getting ready to bolt out of the stadium and back to Spikemuth. “Are you ok?”  
“Spikemuth is under attack by a Pokémon I’ve never seen before! The champion is helping me fight it off but I didn’t know if you were ok!”  
“Turffield Stadium was just attacked as well.” Piers stood up, ready to bolt. “I’m comin’ back to help you!”  
“Piers wait!” Sonia’s voice chimed in, rushed and desperate. She still had her phone to her ear and was holding her hand out to stop Piers. “The Stow-on-Side gym is under attack as well, they need help.”  
“Go help Allister,” Marnie said from the other end of the phone. “I can handle m’self, and Nicholas isn’t the champion for nothin’.”  
Piers hesitated for a moment before he realized Marnie was right. If the champion and Marnie were there, they didn’t need Piers’ help.   
“I’ll help Allister,” he said.  
There was a loud crash from Marnie’s end of the line, followed by the muffled sound of Marnie yelling ‘Bugger!’ in annoyance.  
“Be careful!” Marnie yelled when she finally got back to the phone, and promptly hung up.  
Sonia was already walking out the door when Piers followed, her bag in one hand and a Pokeball in the other.  
She called a Corviknight out of the ball the second the door was open. It let out a mighty caw and spread its wing out to let the two climb onto its back.  
Corviknight were fast, and Piers was suddenly grateful that the Corviknight taxi service had their Pokemon carry small riding cars. He had to cling to the massive bird’s metal plate body with all his might to avoid falling as the wind pushed at his body and tugged at his hair.  
The advantage to the speed though, was that they were at Stow-on-Side within just a few minutes, and the bird was graceful enough to not kill them when it landed.  
As soon as Corviknight’s claws were on the ground, so were Piers and Sonia. The two wasted no time in shoving open the doors to the stadium and running inside.   
Standing inside was Allister, a small figure standing fiercely against another unfamiliar beast.  
This one was a sight smaller than the flower, but no less strange. It had a quadrupedal form, thin and pitch black. Its front two legs were longer than the other two and ended in scythes that it shoved into the ground in order to propel itself forward, and Piers noticed that the grass around it withered and died as it moved. Its skull was dragonlike, and its skin stretched so painfully tight around the bones that it looked like the pressure would tear it at any moment. A single snake-like creature wiggled its way from one of the creature’s eyesockets to another, seemingly unconcerned with the battle at hand.  
A ball of blackness formed in front of Allister’s Gengar to be tossed at the opposing Pokemon, only for the thing to easily dodge it and slash right through Gengar’s ghostly form. Gengar was KO’d in an instant and recalled to its ball.  
Sonia reached behind her waist, underneath her lab coat, and pulled out a Pokeball. Piers did the same without even thinking about it.   
They threw in perfect sync, a Malamar and a Chandelure popping out and declaring battle together.  
Half a second later, a Cursola appeared next to them, but it didn’t look nearly as cool as the other two did when they appeared.  
The strange Pokemon seemed to stare at them for a moment, before letting out a banshee’s wail of a cry and charging at them.  
The three sprung into action, shouting out commands and giving signals to dodge attacks, while dodging the ones that the new Pokemon aimed at the trainers themselves.  
“Night Slash!” Piers called out to Malamar as the beast charged at him. He sidestepped the thing’s attack just to see its scythe claws cut off a small chunk of his hair.   
Time moved in slow motion as Malamar opened its beak to call a shadowy assault down on the enemy, and the other trainers called out new orders to their exhausted Pokemon. Their efforts mattered little as the beast whirled around and jabbed one of its scythes directly into Piers’ side.  
Piers stared, frozen, into the empty eyes of the beast. It stared back for just a moment, hunger and anger visible in its gaze despite its lack of eyes.  
And then it roared again, and tossed Piers across the stadium.  
The trainer skidded across the grass and dirt floor, finally making a stop five metres away from the fight.  
He gasped in agony and clutched at his side only to feel his skin tear as his fingers gripped at it. He looked down in horror to see a wave of decay spreading from the wound, turning his skin odd colors and causing pain just before killing his nerves.  
“Cover me!” Sonia screamed to Allister. Allister nodded and shouted out orders at a record speed, and Cursola unfailingly obeyed.  
As the death beast recoiled away from the attacks in surprise, Sonia made a mad dash around it, ducking under its claws in a surprisingly graceful motion as she ran to Piers’ side and knelt ydown next to him.  
“What did it do?” Sonia asked hurriedly, glancing back at Allister and Cursola where they were trying their hardest to keep the monster distracted.  
Piers moved his hand away from the wound and Sonia’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.  
“Ok, did anything like this happen to Milo?” she asked, getting straight to business instead of dwelling on the situation.  
“Yeah,” Piers answered.  
“What was it? How did you fix it?”  
“Eyes,” Piers choked out. He was starting to feel woozy. “All over his skin. They went away when I caught the flower thing.”  
Sonia glanced back at where Allister was fighting and bit her lip. She turned back to Piers. “I’m gonna borrow your Pokemon for a bit, ok?”  
Piers nodded and Sonia unclipped Piers’ three remaining Pokeballs from the holster at his hip.  
Before she rejoined the fight, Sonia shrugged off her labcoat, folded it, and pressed it against the gash on Piers’ side.   
“Keep pressure on this,” she said, and felt Piers’ hand brush against her own before she stood up.  
Sonia reached for the ball that held Obstagoon, and charged back into the fight. She threw the ball above the monster they were fighting and an especially angry-looking Obstagoon appeared with a roar.  
Massive claws of shadow appeared around Obstagoon’s own claws, amplifying their power and digging into the monster’s skin with a previously untapped fury.  
The monster let out a screech of pain and shook off the Obstagoon, but it landed on its feet and roared again.  
“Throat chop,” Sonia said, hard and calculated. She wasn’t going to waste time on status effects or stats, she was going to do damage and she was going to do it fast.  
Obstagoon was more than happy to oblige, and it struck the monster’s throat hard enough to make it choke.  
“Shadow claw.” Without retreating, Obstagoon followed Sonia’s command and clawed at the monster’s eyesockets.  
The monster reared its head back in a silent roar and reached in to close its jaws around Obstagoon’s head.  
“Obstruct.”  
Obstagoon crossed its arms and stood steadfastly against the assault, protected now by an invisible wall.  
“Back me up!” Sonia yelled to Allister. Before the creature could attack Obstagoon again, it was hit from behind with a ball of pure shadow.  
The monster stumbled, and let out another silent roar before it was hit between the eyes by an Ultra ball.  
Wiggle.  
Wiggle.  
Wiggle.  
Click!  
Sonia and Allister let out dual sighs of relief as the Pokeball went still.  
“If I had known it would be that easy I would have had him call out Obstagoon ages ago,” Sonia said through breathy, delirious laughter as she bent to pick up the ball.   
The ball felt cold and heavy in her hand, unnaturally so. It was worrying, but she would have to put it on a backburner for now.  
“Allister, call an ambulance.” Sonia ran back over to Piers. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow, but sure enough the decay that had spread over his skin was gone.  
“Come on,” Sonia muttered to no one in particular as she pressed on the coat still in place over his wound.  
The next few minutes felt like an eternity. It was a car race against death while Sonia was stuck in the passenger’s seat.  
Like a blessing from Arceus itself, the medics arrived on time.  
Sonia stepped back so they could do their jobs, and took the first deep breath she’d taken in hours. At once, all the exhaustion and soreness from running and dodging and screaming for hours straight kicked in, and she groaned softly.  
She still had more work to do, however, and she pulled out her phone and dialed a number at record speed.  
The voice of the newest unbeatable champion answered. “This is Marnie’s phone, Nicholas speaking.”  
“Nicholas?” Sonia asked. “Wy do you have Marnie’s phone?  
“Oh hi Sonia. She has to get things in order as the new gym leader so she handed me her phone and told me to answer any calls.”  
“You two are ok then?”  
“Yep! We took down the thing that attacked.” Nicholas sounded proud.  
“What was it?” Sonia asked.  
“The Pokedex calls it a Phobiso. I’ve never seen one before though.”  
“Does it say what kind of Pokemon it is?”  
“Let’s see...” Nicholas was silent for a few moments. “The Isolophobia Pokemon.”  
“Isolophobia Pokemon...” Sonia echoed to herself. “Nicholas, as soon as you can I need you and Marnie to meet me at the lab.”  
“Got it,” Nicholas replied.  
“Thanks,” Sonia said, then hung up.  
She was going to have one hell of a story to tell Hop.


End file.
